Friday, 15 March 2013

I realise I haven't really spoken about my role in the group or the project as a whole much on here, so here's some stuff!

I've fallen into the role of technical artist, which basically means I'm responsible for anything engine related mostly, but also determining what we as 3D artists can realistically model to work efficiently in engine.

I started out just getting to grips with the software, which felt like a nightmare at first, but it's becoming a lot more clear now. I've mostly just been blocking out the whitebox of the level and figuring out cool techy stuff in engine which we can use to make everything look cool!

here are some of the later shots

We'r really trying to push the fact that these streets were really narrow and claustrophobic. I've taken a whole load of screens from engine which we've had to paintover to get a better sense of the layout, mood and assets we need to concentrate on to really start fleshing out the level.

Since these shots I've done a fair amount more in Cry. Apart from just rejigging the overall layout here and there, I've put in placeholders for the skybox and ground terrain, worked out how to use the flowgraph to implement triggers for post processing effects and recently have been creating some height maps for parallax mapping on our textures, because we felt the normals weren't doing some of the textures justice.

These were the textures we initially put into cry, but felt that the normals didn't make them pop quite enough

And here's just a quick comparison between parallax occlusion on the left, and normal bump maps on the right

Aswell as being the Cry guy, I've also been modelling some churches. Finding time between sorting everything out in cry and going back and forth with the rest of group, aswell as having other projects to finish means I haven't got these buildings done and out of the way, which I'm not pleased with myself about.

The middle one was the original model which I thought I could do in a modular fashion, and it worked to some extent, but I realised really churches need to be a bit more unique, so I took elements I liked from it and modelled what is now the one on the left hand side. That one is pretty much done. The one on the right, I pulled elements from the left and have begun on another, which is almost done and I'll post up soon!

Aaand finally, I've been doing some concept work as well, this is where I feel most comfortable working.

Early mood painting

Building ideas

Love Lane mood painting

Building structure concept

Thames street catching the evening sun down by the docks

The goal right now is to get those two churches completely finished and hopefully textured in the next few days, and also get another concept of thames street docks finished, then hopefully jump into some more asset stuff!

Sunday, 3 March 2013

Week 4 of the group project.
Whitebox in cry is coming along. We're aiming to have our level fully explorable by thursday, but I want it done by tuesday for Heather to see, so I'm cracking on.
Whilst I'm enjoying fiddling around in Cryengine, I feel like I'm not contributing on the modelling side of things. I was supposed to make this modular church, but I don't think the modularity will work so much, because churches are pretty unique in their own right. So I want to approach this again, maybe making more unique models from my already built modular pieces.
I realise it's early days, and I really need to dig into cryengine and get used to using it efficiently, so it's not wasted time. Once we know exactly what and where everything is going there will be more need for unique assets to be made.
Also something I'm aware of that I've mentioned to the group is that some of the buildings created don't seem to work too well with one another, and this is something we need to get right straight away, obviously everyone has different art styles, we just need to communicate better, and more frequently to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Dan wrote a nice design doc and art specification which hopefully will instil the same ideas in everyone's mind.
There's some fancy things I want to do with the engine, which I'm thinking about now, but really can wait till the end... still, it's a good idea to keep them in mind, let's see if I can pull it off.